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Indian sprinter’s fight has been a victory for women

Dutee Chand went to Court of Arbitration for Sport “to run the way I was born.”

Indian sprinter Dutee Chand, 20, fought a ban for hyperandrogenism, or high levels of testosterone, to compete in the Olympics. Chand is not expected to challenge fr a medal in Rio. (Rafiq Maqbool / The Associated Press)

RIO DE JANEIRO—Caster Semenya runs later this week at her second Olympics and when she does the world will debate, again, the fairness of letting women with naturally high levels of testosterone compete the way they’re born.

The debate has centered on the South African 800-metre runner because she looks less feminine than some would like and she’s fast, really fast, and closing in on a long-standing world record.

But the only reason that Semenya will get to run here — without being forced to undergo surgery or hormone therapy — is because of a young, far less famous Indian sprinter named Dutee Chand and the Canadian lawyer who fought the sport’s gender testing rules and won.

“It feels great to know that other women have benefitted because of a fight that I took up,” Chand said, in an email response to questions after she arrived in the Olympic village.

“When I appealed to the (Court of Arbitration for Sport) I knew a favourable decision will mean no one else will have to suffer like I did when I was banned.”

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Chand, 20, is one of seven children born to a family of weavers and for a decade her prize money has helped support the family. She has a condition called hyperandrogenism and, like Semenya, her body naturally produces testosterone at such high levels that the international governing body for athletics, the IAAF, considers her to be male.

She didn’t know any of this until, excitedly on her way to run at the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games, she was suddenly pulled from the team and subject to a series of tests. What followed was traumatic. Bold print newspaper headlines back home asked if she was a boy or a girl. She wasn’t allowed to share a room with the other girls on her team anymore.

“All the honour I earned, I lost,” she told an Indian newspaper then.

This is why many women — a study found there were four at 2012 London Olympics alone — have quietly acquiesced to whatever the IAAF has told them they must do to stay in sport.

Chand, with the pro-bono help of James Bunting, a sports law expert at Toronto’s Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg, decided to fight.

“I should be able to run the way I was born,” she said.

For now, the highest sport court agrees.

Last July, CAS determined that the IAAF’s policy, which set a line in the sand for testosterone — women above 10 nanomoles per litre were considered male and barred from competition until they had surgery or hormone therapy to reduce their levels — was discriminatory and lacked scientific evidence. It gave them two years to come back with scientific proof for the rule and set it aside until then.

The court wasn’t satisfied that the degree of advantage athletes with hyperandrogenism have is any greater than the many other variables determining athletic excellence, from inheriting great genes to proper nutrition and coaching.

So Chand is here to run the 100-metre sprint with the only body she’s ever known.

“It is a dream come true for me, as is the case with most other athletes. I am excited to be here,” she said.

Unlike Semenya, who has repeatedly been referred to as the surest gold medal on the track at these Games, Chand entered Friday’s heats with few expectations.

Her personal best — 11.24 seconds — ranks her 77th in the world.

Both the IAAF and the International Olympic Committee are committed to reversing the CAS decision and finding a way to cleanly slot athletes into male and female gender classes in an increasing complex world, but they weren’t able to do it in time for these Games.

“If Dutee’s victory at CAS is sustained, it will mean that female athletes will no longer have to fear that they may be excluded from sport because of the way they look or on the basis of some arbitrarily determined hormonal measure,” said the University of Toronto’s Bruce Kidd, a prominent sport policy adviser, who has been a champion of her case.

“Most of the female athletes and coaches I know see Dutee’s participation in Rio as a victory for all women.”

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